


Lardo Goes to Law School

by duan-with-your-shitt (soybeez)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Explicit Language, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 02:06:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7021369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soybeez/pseuds/duan-with-your-shitt





	Lardo Goes to Law School

Seriously reconsidering every choice that he had made up to this point, Shitty poured over his notes, his eyes going blurry as he tried to decipher the well annotated outline. Law school was the worst choice ever, especially Harvard law school. He didn’t even especially like Harvard, a fact that most of his classmates found unsavory. 

“Then why’d you even come here?” a guy in khaki shorts and boat shoes asked, his hairy arms crossed across his chest. 

“Because,” Shitty had said tiredly, rocking back in his chair, “one has to understand the system to fucking change it. The only way to defeat Harvard Law is to become it. You have to get into the mind of the fucking enemy. That and to pull some of the sticks out of people’s asses.”

The man snorted and walked off, muttering something about “liberal trash is fucking everywhere”. Shitty watched him go, taking a long drag off his beer. 

Textbooks and loose sheets of paper were scattered around the third-hand desk in his dorm room, adding to the detritus of chewed up pens and dry highlighters. It was days like this that made Shitty miss the Haus the most. Without Bitty plying him with fresh baked goods and Jack sitting next to him sorting through hockey stats, drinking while studying, alone and in an empty dorm room, felt a little alcoholic. He would take a break, he decided, shoving the notes away from him. The thick packet seemed to grow sentience and stare at him, making his guts go queasy with guilt. Pulling the packet back with the tip of one finger he sighed heavily; he’d take a break after he finished this chapter. 

There was a quick ‘rat-tat-tat’ knock at the door and, thrilled to be given an excuse to leave the desk, Shitty launched himself out of the chair. He yanked the door open with much more force than was necessary, forgetting that he wasn’t wearing any pants, and was met with a small, soaking wet figure dripping water all over the hall floor. 

“Lardo?” he asked, stunned. Because, of course he knew that it was Lardo, he would know her anywhere, but she wasn’t supposed to be here. Lardo was Samwell and hockey and the cold burn of ice; seeing her in his shit hole of a law school dorm room was like seeing an oasis in a desert. Logically, it could be real, much more likely it was a figment of his exhausted, caffeine addled imagination. 

“Who else would I be, Shitts?”

“Why are you here?” He was still confused. 

“Shitty, I just need to tell you something.” She was shivering now, her arms wrapped tightly around her chest in attempt to hold in body heat. “Can I come in? And Your hall mates probably aren’t as used to your junk as the boys at the Haus, though,” she observed. Shitty’s junk had long since ceased to surprise anyone on the Samwell Men’s Hockey Team.

“Yeah, shit, sorry.” He stepped out of the doorway, making room for her to come in. “Fuck, Lardo, did you swim here?” He grabbed the discarded pair of boxers off his bed, quickly pulling them on. They had hockey sticks crossed over the butt. 

“Can you not hear the shitshow of a storm outside? It’s like the end of the world out there. I could barely see the taillights of the car in front of me on the way up here.”

He shrugged, tilting his head to one side like a dog trying to hear the wind. “Honestly, I think I have pretty substantial hearing loss from EpiKegster 2012.”

“Johnson,” the two said in unison, smirking.

They took another beat, the two wordlessly watching each other, before Shitty took up a slightly nervous chatter. “But seriously, Lards, you look like a drowned rat. And you’re dripping all over my floor. Let me get you something to wear.”

“Shits, I have to tell you something.” 

“Then tell me.” He had started rummaging through his dresser to find something that would fit her. Not that it would be hard to do, exactly. She barely cleared five feet and Shitty was closer to six so everything would fit her, it would just be big. Since his room was tiny he had barely moved, just turned his back and shuffled a few feet away from her. A Samwell hockey shirt hung from one hand, a conveniently new pair of boxers from the other, when he heard her clear her throat. 

“Bentley Knight, you look at me right now.” 

Slowly, Shitty turned, a pit of apprehension forming in his stomach. Lardo never called him Bentley. No one called him Bentley. In fact, Lardo was the only person, other than Jack, at school that knew his first name. She looked mad, which was even more confusing. And not the “Oh my god, Shitty, why do I put up with you” thing she did when he showed up for lunch forty-five minutes late, or thought that they were going to a movie tonight instead of three nights from now. No, Lardo had that look on her face she got when someone messed up the supply room, or pissed on the ice. Surprisingly enough that look had never been aimed at him before and he found it truly terrifying. “Fuck, Lardo, what’s wrong?” If possible she seemed to grow in size when she was mad, like some sort of Vietnamese Hulk. 

“I need you to fucking listen to me when I talk to you, okay? I drove all the way to fucking Cambridge to say this, and I’m not going to say it to your back. So please, listen to me.” 

“Okay.” he fell into the molded plastic desk chair, the clothes still clenched into his fists. “I’m listening.” 

“It sucks, you know, because you’re my best friend.”

“You’re mine too, Lards.” 

“Don’t interrupt,” she snapped. “It sucks, because you’re my best friend and I’m so proud of you for getting into Harvard and going to law school and just being generally swasome. And I know that should be enough for me, but it’s not, because I’m half in love with you.” His mouth fell open but her glare made him snap it shut. “I drove all the way here to fucking Harvard in the fucking rain to tell you that I’m half fucking in love with you. I have been for a while now, years, I think. And I didn’t tell you,” she continued, her eyes sharp, “because the timing was off. We were friends, and it was great, and I thought, ‘maybe we could be more’. He’s smart and fucking hilarious and he knows his way around a glue gun, what could be better? But then you got me the job with the team. Which is swasome and I love being with you and the stupid hockey bros, but then I thought it would be weird, you know, being the team manager and dating a player. It was hard enough getting some of those bastards to take me seriously to begin with, I wasn’t going to give them another reason to chirp me. After that I was in Kenya.”

“What then?” He couldn’t help himself, he had to ask. 

“I don’t know.” The frustration seemed to leak out like helium out of a pierced balloon and she deflated, her shoulders going slack. “I had just gotten back and I needed to get back into the swing of things. Parties at the Haus and popcorn and Bitty’s baked goods. Then I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t want you to say ‘thanks but no thanks’ and have everything be fucked. So I pushed it down and figured I’d rather be your bro than nothing. And then…” 

“And then law school,” Shitty finished miserably. That had been an interesting night. He hadn’t told anyone where he way applying, not even Jack. The acceptance letter came in the night of Lardo’s art show and, despite his best intentions, he ended up ruining the night for her. It didn’t help that half of the men’s hockey team dog piled him in the middle of the floor. She didn’t talk to him for a week and, even then, it was only because of hockey. After finals he showed up at her apartment with a batch of Bitty’s cookies as a peace offering. She accepted in form of beer and bad movies. 

“How do you say ‘Oh, by the way, I think I love you’ to your best friend when he’s about to leave for Harvard?” She shrugged, her wet fo-hawk flopping sadly to one side. “And I don’t know what you’re going to say and I know that this is selfish and totally out of line and unfair, but I had to tell you. You always talk about communication, and I know I’ve been kind of weird on and off since the show and I wanted to explain myself.”

“Fuck, Lardo, you’re my best bro.” He stood, taking a step towards her. He ran a hand through his hair, his disgustingly short hair. “And saying goodbye to you hurt more than saying goodbye to Faber and Jack and the Haus combined.” He didn’t know how to do this. None of the words in his head sounded right, and his mouth felt dry and glued shut. “God, Lardo, I’ve been in fucking love with you since that first fucking Hause party when you burped in Holster’s face.  
But not just that,” he added, realizing how dumb it sounded, “it’s...”

With one big stride she was on him, her arms thrown around his neck and her hair tickling the bottom of his nose. Her arms were wet and cold and she smelled like rain. Her mouth, pressed against his, tasted like rain too. So this is what kissing Lardo felt like. It felt like perfection.  
Then, as soon as it all started, as soon as he realized exactly what was happening and how much he like it, it stopped. Before he could process that there was an open palm to his chest, shoving him back. 

“Damit, Shitty, why didn’t you tell me.” She stood in front of him, soaked to the bone with her hands on her hips and her mouth curved into a scowl.  
Throwing his head back, he laughed. That stupid guffawing laugh that only Shitty could manage to make attractive. “That’s a damn sight hypocritical, Lards.” She cracked a grudging smile. “For all the same reasons. You’re my best friend. I didn’t know what to say because I didn’t that you had those same feelings for me and I sure as hell wasn’t going to wreck what we had because what we have, what we have is one of the best things in my life. And I would rather have that, have you as a friend, than to loose that.”

Pulling her lip between her teeth Lardo nodded. “So, if we agree to stay bros, no matter what, we could try being more than bros?”  
“Fucking yes,” Shitty practically shouted, because all he wanted to do was kiss her again. And again and again and maybe some more after that.  
“Then,” she laughed, tossing back her head, “since this went over so well, do you mind if I stay over? Because it’s raining like cats and dogs and I really don’t want to drive back tonight because I might die a horrible death in a fiery car crash.” 

“Lardy-Lards, you are welcome here whenever.” Grabbing the clothes back up he held them out to her. “The boxers are brand new, so you don’t have to worry about any of that, and the shirt’s clean.” 

Leaning up on her toes she kissed him on the cheek. “Shitty, you are a god amongst men.”

“What would you say if I told you that my shit hole of a dorm room had an ensuite and you could even take a shower?”

“I would call you divine.” 

“Then divine I am, Ms. Duan. I’ll grab you a towel, and feel free to use my shampoo. My lack of flow means I don’t really have to use it much these days.”

“You still have hair, Shitts,” she laughed, ruffling his short brown hair. “It’ll grow back.” 

“But no one here has a flow,” he whined. “Everyone has the same stupid ass hair that I do and wears the same bland ass outfits. Khaki, Lardo, so much khaki. Do you know how many stink eyes I’ve gotten for the stash alone? These rat bastards couldn’t handle the flow.”

“Are you telling me you don’t like Harvard?” she asked with a smirk. 

“I’m telling you that Harvard is some sort of yuppie hell that I have been sucked into. The law program is swasome though, I have to admit.” 

“At least you’re only two hours from Samwell.” 

“Definitely doable for commuting.” Smirking, he looked at Lardo, really looked at her in a way that she never quite found appropriate. She was a piece of art. Her hair had grown out a little, hanging limb and wet around her chin. He ruffled it, spraying water droplets around them in a halo. She squinted meanly at him. “You go ahead and jump in the shower before you catch pneumonia.” His voice was deeper than normal, oddly husky. “I can throw your clothes in the dryer down the hall and then we can grab something to eat. I am fucking starving and studying these fucking outlines is making me consider dire acts if I don’t get out of this damn room.” 

Laughing, she walked to the small bathroom, closing the door behind her. With a dramatic sigh he dropped onto the bed, flopping down flat on his back. This was fucking happening. Lardo was in his shit bathroom taking a shit shower and planning to spend the night in his shit dorm room. Not that this was exactly a new thing. Lardo had spent her fair share of post-Kegster nights passed out at the Haus on the janky old couch. Pushing himself up he took the two steps to the closet and grabbed the towels. 

He knocked on the door. “I’m gonna come in and leave the towels on the back of the toilet. My eyes are very tightly shut.” 

“Thanks bro. Also, I’m surprised by how clean your bathroom is.” 

“It’s not nearly as fun being gross when you’re the only one living in your own filth. How’s sharing a bathroom with the Goalie Chowder?” 

“Chowder is a lamb. It’s precious, he’s so worried about doing something wrong that he keeps the thing immaculate. He almost made a chart to make sure that he wouldn’t use the shower when I needed it.” He heard her laugh, the water pounding against the tile making everything sound all tinny and distorted. “Oh, and my clothes are that soggy heap on the floor if you want to go ahead and throw them in the dryer.” She stuck her head out from behind the curtain, grinning. “You are a gem, Shitts.” 

A trail of water led from Shitty’s door to the hall laundry. Shitty threw the clothes into a dryer, slamming the door shut with a clang. Pushing himself on top of the dryer Shitty let his heels clank against the door, thinking about where he should go from here. He and Lardo had just declared their almost-love for each other, but did that mean that anything really had to change? And, if they did change, what would change? Did he want it to change? With a groan he let his head fall back against the wall with a thunk. 

“You okay there, Knight?” 

Shitty opened his eyes to see one of the khaki clad drones that lived on his hall, a full clothesbasket in his hands. “Oh, yeah, I’m fine. You know, laundry rooms are great considering life’s turning points.” 

The guy laughed, pouring detergent in one of the machines. He was tall with dark hair and made Shitty miss Jack. Not that Jack would know what to do in this situation, but it would be nice to have someone to talk to. When it came to romance Jack was so fucking clueless. They were drinking coffee at the quad one day their sophomore year when, out of nowhere, he starts rambling about how “Shitty, I like men. Like, I don’t know if I like women too, I might who knows, but I now for a fact that I like men. I’m not exactly sure what to do with that. Can you like both, eh?” It took Shitty thirty minutes to convince him that he could, in fact, be attracted to both men and women if that is how he felt. Then Shitty went on one of his rants about the hypocrisy of professional sports when it came to any sexuality other than heterosexual. 

Sliding off the dryer he pulled his phone from his back pocket. “Bro, I know you’re busy being a professional athlete and all that shit, but we need to hang soon. It’s only an hour and a half to Providence. Could there possibly be a road trip in my near future?” He sent the text to Jack. Yeah, he had some stuff that he needed to talk about. Walking back down the hall he opened the door, the room warm and the air heavy with steam from the shower. Lardo was standing by the desk, now wearing the too big Samwell shirt and the boxers, toweling her hair dry. He hadn’t seen her since classes started and, even though they still talked almost daily, he hadn’t realized just how much he had fucking missed her until now. Texting about Ransom and Holster wrestling on the floor because they had bought RedVines instead of Twizzlers was not nearly as amusing as being there in person. Because Lardo would start pelting them with pieces of popcorn while screaming “Hit him with a chair!” while Jack tried to get them to calm down, saying “I just don’t get why it’s even that big of a deal. They’re both red licorice, right? Aren’t they just the same thing?” And then the two D-men would both jump Jack, who takes a solid thirty seconds to react because he doesn’t understand what is happening to him. 

“Shitty, you are a dream and that shower is a miracle. Well, the shower sucks donkey balls, but taking a shower was a miracle. Oh, but I couldn’t find your hairdryer.” Shitty had a very nice hairdryer that he bought his sophomore year because “It really does make all the difference”. 

He shook his head remorsefully. “I don’t have it. It’s with the rest of my shit at my parent’s house. I don’t really need it because this shit show dries in like five minutes with a towel and it would just take up space.” 

“Oh Shitty,” she rested her hand on his forearm. “I am so sorry for your loss.” It was a very nice hairdryer. With a practiced flip of her wrist she wrapped the towel around her head, cocooning her hair in the dark red towel. She dropped onto the bed and pulled her legs in to sit cross legged, and looked pointedly at him. “So, what is there to eat in this place? Now that I’m not going to shiver to death I’m starving.”

“Well,” Shitty flopped down next to her, his arm resting behind her back, “we have all your standard choices. Pizza, burgers, wings.” 

“Wings!” they shouted in unison, Lardo falling backwards so that they were face to face on the small bed.

“Did you know that Holster can only eat two and a half dozen wings in one sitting? It’s disgraceful.” 

There faces were so close on the bed that he could feel her breath. It smelled like spearmint. “Did you brush your teeth?” 

“Mouthwash,” she said, blowing in his face. “Minty fresh.” God, he wanted to kiss her. He wanted to grab her around the hips, pull her into him, and kiss her until they couldn’t breathe. And then he would kiss her again, because damn, it was fucking Lardo and having her in his bed was the stuff of his fucking dreams. The Samwell shirt was bunched up around her ribcage and the penguin printed boxers pushed down on her hips, exposing a strip of skin. A hand reached out, one finger running across her stomach. “You know, Shitty,” she said, her eyes boring into his, “I did just declare my possibly undying love for you, you are allowed to kiss me.” And so he did. 

 

Her hair smelled like his shampoo and felt like silk between his fingers. One arm was slung around his back, her other hand pushing through his hair. His stache brushed against her upper lip, making her snort out a deep giggle. 

“Well that is a sensation,” she laughed, flicking the edge of his mustache. 

“It makes me look austere.” 

“It makes you look ridiculous, and I love it.” Kissing him again she sat up. “But really, about those wings.” 

“Well,” he said, “you’ll probably want to put your clothes back on before we go out. Not that you don’t look fucking adorable in that, but I’m not sure if that’s really your aesthetic.” 

“Yeah, I don’t really do adorable. I aim more for edgy and brooding. But yeah, I would like real pants.” Getting up off the bed she stretched her arms over her head. “Tell me which dryer they’re in and I’ll go grab them. You kinda need pants too.” 

That was a good point. After telling her where to find her clothes he started rummaging around for pants; there had to be a pair of clean jeans somewhere. Lardo had left the door open and Shitty could hear voices. One of them sounded like Lardo, an annoyed Lardo. Sticking his head out of the room Shitty saw the khaki drone, it looked like he was moving his wet clothes to a dryer, leaning over Lardo. He was at least a foot taller than her, almost Holster’s height,  
and had her cornered between two machines, leaning against the wall and blocking her way with an arm. 

Lardo peered up at him, brown eyes blinking deliberately. “Yes, hockey is a great sport.” Her tone was sweet, even a little flirtatious, but Shitty could hear the steel in it. 

“Yeah, I played center forward for my undergrad team. I went to Harvard. I was captain my senior year. It’s a tough sport,” he went on, oblivious to her growing annoyance. She tried to push past him again, but his ‘unconscious’ shift blocked her again. “I played against Jack Zimmermann once.” He waved his hand idly at the block printed ‘Samwell’ on her shirt. “He was great, don’t get me wrong, but kind of an asshole. Acting like he was something special because his dad was a pro. Plus, I hear he snorts a lot of coke. It was a good game, though.”

Shitty could see the snap. Her lips pulled into a wide, false smile and her shoulders squared back. “It was a great game. Samwell won, and luckily I was there to see Jack stomp your pretentious ass. After the game one of our D-men stole the Harvard captain’s hat, which I now know is you. Holster now uses it as a dartboard before games. And the next time Jack comes home for a game I’ll be sure to tell him that some nameless former hockey player thinks that he’s an asshole. NHL players love shooting the shit with their former managers about other people’s shit ass opinions.” The man’s mouth opened and closed like a fish’s. She hip checked the man hard, throwing him off balance and knocking him into the wall with a heavy oomph. “And you might want to keep your dumb ass opinion to yourself before you shove your foot so far down your fucking throat that it comes out the other end.”

Shitty slow clapped as she stomped down the hall, her eyes flashing. She had made it look accidental but he had seen her foot kick into the asshole’s gut as she stepped over him. “Impressive Lards.” 

“He was a fuckwad,” she said darkly. Shitty laughed; you couldn’t argue with facts.

 

Arnold shot someone on the TV and the explosion jolted Shitty awake. He wasn’t sure exactly what was going on. Terminator 3 was blaring on the TV and he could feel something warm and heavy on his chest, a damp spot building in the hollow of his collarbone. He looked down, convinced that something was trying to smother him in his sleep, to see Lardo draped over him, fast asleep. She was drooping on him and had his chest in some kind of bear hug. Smiling to himself, he ruffled her hair, running his fingers through shoulder-length curtain of hair. He was propped up, half sitting against the pillows with one arm behind his head, the other thrown over Lardo’s back. She muttered something about “damn print majors” and shifted, nuzzling her face into his shoulder and throwing a leg over his. Damn, he had missed her. 

After eating an obscene amount of hot wings Lardo had announced that it was time for beer and movies of a questionable quality. Armed with a case of beer each, assorted junk foods, and all of the Terminator movies the two settled in for one of their patented all night movie marathons. These usually involved drunken popcorn screaming, Jack asking why they were even watching these shit movies, and Ransom and Holster wrestling on the floor. No one was ever really sure how and why that last part happened but it was inevitable. 

“You know,” Lardo said, biting off the head of a pink gummy bear, “these movies are somehow both underrated and overrated at the same time.” 

“So, they’re just rated?” 

“Exactly.” Digging through the bag she picked out the last pink bear and pushed the bag towards Shitty, grabbing another beer from the mini-fridge. It had been conveniently placed within reaching distance of both the bed and the desk. “It a thing of beauty.” They were sitting on the bed with their backs against the wall, a small pile of empty cans already forming in the wastebasket. She let her head loll onto his shoulder. “Why were we both such fucking idiots?” 

“Wha’ choo mean?” he asked, mouth full of gummy bears. Lardo had magnanimously removed all of the nasty ass pink ones, leaving Shitty free to stuff them in his mouth by the handful. 

“Why didn’t we just talk to each other? Why did we have to act like dumb-ass teenagers? We were fucking stupid.” 

Lardo rolled over again, smearing drool across Shitty’s bare chest. Drool would definitely ruin her edgy art cred. It was adorable. Staring at the ceiling he wondered if they really would manage to make it as a couple. The distance was manageable, especially if you factored in the train, but they were both always so busy. Lards had art and hockey and senior bullshit and Shitty had first year law and the Law Review and an internship starting in spring semester. The two already had near constant communication, but he wondered if that would be able to last long term. What Shitty was really worried about, if he would admit it to himself, was that they wouldn’t want to make it work. Shitty hadn’t had a girlfriend since freshman year, and that hadn’t lasted very long. Apparently he was too into, in her words, “hockey, beer, and your hair”. All of those sounded like reasonable pursuits to him, and none of them bothered Lardo. She loved hockey just as much as he did, she could drink more than he could, and she respected the flow. She had even cut his hair, which had been a very emotional event. But he was still worried. He was worried that she would be traveling all the time with the boys and wouldn’t have time for him. He was worried that things would get too deep and then fall apart and then there wouldn’t be anything left. Trying to be a couple could put everything that they were at risk, but Shitty thought that it was worth it.

“If you touch that,” she muttered to herself, “I will kill you.” She was back in the too-big Samwell shirt, the legs of the penguin boxers falling almost to her knees. Her hair stuck up in cowlicks at odd little angles and occasionally she would do this funky little rabbit kick. They had fallen asleep on the couch hundreds of times, and even slept in the same bed a few times, but never like this. There was the occasional touching legs or a slept on arm, but there was never any intentional cuddling. 

There had been a reason he always ended up in Jack’s bed after Winter Screw; he didn’t want to sleep alone, but he couldn’t be with the person he really wanted. That was because he had been a punk ass bitch who hadn’t been able to tell a woman how he felt about her. Jack had been the only one that really knew about Lardo. Everyone else chirped him about it, sure, but he had actually told Jack. When Lardo had been gone fall semester his junior year Shitty had gotten shitfaced off tub juice at Hazapalooza and ended up in Jack’s bed at three in the morning. Naked, of course. Shitty wasn’t a fan of clothes in general, but even less so when he was drunk. 

“Fuck, Shitts,” Jack moaned, rolling over. “Why are you in my bed?” 

“Dude, I needed a snuggle.” 

“You aren’t wearing any clothes,” Jack said tiredly. It was too early for this. “If you put boxers on I’ll let you stay in the bed.” 

“Deal,” Shitty slurred. He stumbled through the connecting bathroom, pulled on a pair of boxers, and crawled back into bed with Jack. Now he was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling and resigned to his fate. “I miss Lardo,” Shitty moaned, resting his head in Jack’s lap. “She should be here. Why isn’t she here?” He looked up at Jack with big, pitiful doe eyes. 

“She’s in Kenya, Shitts, she’ll be back in a couple of months.” 

“That’s so far away,” Shitty moaned. “It’s like, months away.” He rolled onto his stomach, his elbows on the bed and his chin in his hands. “Do you think she misses me?” 

“Of course she misses you. I’m sure that she misses all of us.”

Shitty sighed dramatically, rolling his eyes. “That’s not what I mean, Jack of all Trades. I mean, do you think she misses me. Meeee.” He drew the word out in a long whine. “Because, you know Jack, I love her. Like, love love her. Like, I love you, and then I love Lardo. Did you know that her name is Larissa?” 

Jack laughed. “Yeah, I figured that out. Have you told Lards this?”

“Of course not,” Shitty said, as if it were the most ridiculous idea. 

“Are you going to tell her when she gets back?” 

Shitty shook his head sadly. “It’s complicated.”

Jack sighed. Not that he could judge about complicated feelings. “You can sleep here tonight if you want to.” 

Leaning up Shitty kissed Jack on the mouth. “You, my friend, are the truest of bros.” 

“Go to sleep, Shitty.” 

He had been in love with Lardo for years and it had been his worst kept secret, expect when it came to Lardo. They had both been idiots. But people did always say that these sorts of things were obvious unless you were the one involved. He curled his arm tightly around her back, enjoying the way her warmth sunk into his body. She felt comfortable there, lying on him like a Haus beanbag chair. He loved that she always smelled faintly of oil paint and hot glue and that she let him help with her art projects. He liked watching her work in the studio, the way mouth twisted and her brow crinkled in concentration. Watching her work was art in motion. When she slept she looked like she was carved from marble, a still life in watercolor and light. He was getting sentimental and it was disgusting. 

This would work; he would make this work. Lardo would eat all of the pink gummy bears and he would help her bedazzle whatever he needed to at any hour of the night. He would go to Samwell every other weekend if he needed to, especially during hockey season. He would get his law degree and she would have a gallery and everything would work out. Eyes getting heavy he leaned back against the pillows, pulling Lardo tighter against his chest. Maybe, he thought as he drifted off to sleep, they could actually be something great together. And wasn’t that swasome.


End file.
